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Free Online Computer Science Courses – worth checking out.
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A Young Stray Dawdled Into Our House. What Happened Next Was Incredible. | SF Globe.
Yes. OF COURSE baby ducks are adorable. I hatched ducklings for 22 years and never got over how wonderful they are. But I’m really starting to worry about the proliferation of these kinds of videos. Are we really supposed to believe these are all *amazing* happenings?
After raising ducks for more than 25 years, I know a few things about them.
There’s no way it “dawdled” into the house. They either found it and took it in, or hatched it. It is imprinted on the person in the video.
I really have to wonder how many of these are being staged for the publicity they garner? I also wonder what happens to the critters AFTER the internet hype dies down. Are these people committed to looking after these critters THEIR ENTIRE LIVES?
Just so you know: it’s cruel to raise a duckling in isolation from other ducklings, so I sure hope they didn’t do this just so they could make the video. Ducklings, like almost every other social creature need others of their kind in order to develop normally.
It’s one thing to actually find a duckling that’s been separated from its mother and siblings, but something else entirely to snatch one out of the wild so you can raise it, or, worse yet, to grab one so you can post videos like this.
Ray, Having a bath.
I have a duck who has just had his 17th spring. I can’t say “seen” because he’s been blind for several years due to cataracts. He was hatched in 1997. He doesn’t get around very well anymore, so he gets some special treatment. So, a question for anyone who picks up a duckling (or gosling, or any other creature they “find”): are you prepared for THIS? A duck will *never* be house trained. You can’t house train something that doesn’t care where it poos.
If you want to see cute ducklings, or bunnies, poke around my farm gallery. I can guarantee you that none of these were taken out of the wild for publicity, or to be used for click marketing.
Oh, and just in case you read some of the comments under the video….. DO NOT FEED BIRD SEED TO DUCKLINGS! Also, DO NOT FEED BREAD TO DUCKLINGS! Honestly, the amount of misinformation that proliferates when it comes to the care of animals – especially anything that is neither a dog nor a cat – is truly staggering. When I was doing my hatching program, I put together a care guide for the eggs/ducklings. It provides some ideas of what to feed ducklings if you have no actual duckling feed.
“What contributed to the evolution of faces in the ape-like ancestors of humans? The prehistoric version of a bar fight —over women, resources and other slug-worthy disagreements, new research from the University of Utah scheduled for publication in the journal Biological Reviews on June 9 suggests.
University of Utah biologist David Carrier and Michael H. Morgan, a University of Utah physician, contend that human faces —especially those of our australopith ancestors—evolved to minimize injury from punches to the face during fights between males. The findings in the paper, titled “Protective buttressing of the hominin face,” present an alternative to the previous long-held hypothesis that the evolution of the robust faces of our early ancestors resulted largely from the need to chew hard-to-crush foods such as nuts.”
A Better Way to Say Sorry | cuppacocoa
“I’m sorry for…
This is wrong because…
In the future, I will…
Will you forgive me?”
Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies
“A logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning. Logical fallacies are like tricks or illusions of thought, and they’re often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people. Don’t be fooled! This website has been designed to help you identify and call out dodgy logic wherever it may raise its ugly, incoherent head.”
Teachers Surveyed on Using Games in Class | Games and Learning.
Some new numbers worth looking at.
Hugh Jackman, TI And LL Cool J Rapped ‘The Music Man’ – Digg.
I’d love to see them do, “Ya Got Trouble”. I’ve always thought that it would make a good theme song for the violence in videogames debate. I even have some alternate lyrics.
Opinion: Equity and Excellence in Skills and Higher Education in Canada | Canada 2020
“Canada has been a strong performer in post-secondary education and skills development for many years. On key measures we are at or near the top of international rankings and highly skilled Canadians contribute to economic prosperity, social innovation, and political and community well-being.
But there are signs that Canada’s performance may be deteriorating and, despite a commitment to equality, opportunities and achievement in skills and higher education have been poorly distributed across regions and groups. A new report from Canada 2020, Skills and Higher Education: Towards Excellence and Equity, reveals that we are not doing enough to achieve the levels of excellence and equity in skills and higher education we need to sustain a prosperous economy and fair society.”
TorranceLearning – Decisions, decisions … about learning media
“At this very moment an instructional designer somewhere in the world is making a very important decision. In a perfect world, this decision is being made near the beginning of the project. Learning & performance objectives are aligned with organizational outcomes and they’ve been confirmed with stakeholders. Subject matter experts and actual learners have been engaged in the project. And then the decision.”
Slipping math scores don’t equal a crisis, says math conference panel.
Sure. And if you believe this, I have some stuff I’d like to sell you……
Our students are dropping in math scores, compared to where they were 10 years ago, BUT we are reassured that it doesn’t matter? Nothing to see here…..
“In numeracy, we were below the average for our adults,” said McGarvey. “Our 16-24- year-olds certainly do better in numeracy than the 45-50-year olds and the 55-65-year-olds … This sort of proved to me that, yes, the mathematics that 15-year-olds and teenagers are doing is more helpful in terms of them developing problem-solving skills than perhaps some of our adults who are complaining about mathematics in the schools.”
Since when did we start to assume that math ability remained constant, OR that adult math skills were directly related to the math we learned (or didn’t learn) in school?
This is statistical smoke and mirrors, and their claim that the differences between adult and youth numeracy levels indicate all’s well ONLY holds water if the differences were the same 10 years ago. Were they? If those numbers are not available for comparison, then making ANY claims about the meaning of these values for this year are fabrications.
We KNOW that knowledge and skills tend to drop off over time if they are not used, and the kinds of math that we learn in school are not the kinds normally needed in every day life, so it would stand to reason that math skills would be lower in adults, … which means this comparison is meaningless.
Cognitive Dissonance in action. The people doing the talking have an investment in being right. The “new” approach to teaching math HAS to be better than the old, otherwise they are wrong.
The president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association said what PISA measures is very narrow compared to what Alberta’s education system tries to teach students.
“The Alberta curriculum is far more complex,” Mark Ramsankar said. “We talk about student agency, we talk about ingenuity and creativity. PISA doesn’t measure that.”
So, it’s OK. Never mind the fact that our kids are doing more poorly at the math skills we’ve been measuring we are to trust that they are doing *much* better at a whole pile of things we aren’t measuring.
Sure.
Canine hip dysplasia genes identified
“Canine hip dysplasia (CHD) plays a central role in the selection of breeding animals ever since modern dog breeding began. This inherited condition is common in all dog breeds as well as in mongrels. Researchers at the Institute for Animal Breeding and Genetics at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover Foundation (TiHo), has identified important genetic variants and their interrelated pathways for the pathogenesis of CHD in German Shepherds. The scientists genotyped more than 1000 German Shepherds and screened a large number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for their association with CHD. Professor Dr. Ottmar Distl and his doctoral student Lena Fels have published their research results in the international online journal PLOS ONE (http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096618). “
